‘Within seconds there was a dolphin right underneath me’

Canberra musician Sally Walker could not believe what happened when she played her flute on the water in Port Stephens.

Sally Walker playing as dolphins swim alongside.

When Canberra flautist Sally Walker was 20 she went on a dolphin dive organised by a friend.

“They said ‘next time bring your flute, they love music’,” Walker says. “So, 30 years later I ­finally got around to it.”

During the pandemic in 2021, soon after Walker’s father had died and at a “very difficult time”, Walker took her flute on a dolphin dive at Port Stephens, north of Newcastle, and when she stood on the boat’s bow and started playing to a group of dolphins nearby she witnessed something remarkable: they began to “dance”.

“Within seconds there was a dolphin right underneath me. First one fin, then two fins then before I knew it there were four or five ­dolphins around … it felt like I was flying.”

The boat’s skipper said hehad never seen bottlenose dolphins follow a boat out of the bay before, which Walker caught on video.

“They only come when they want to, they’re in their natural habitat, so that felt very special.

“I had the hydrophone (an underwater microphone) on the boat recording their calls, and it was really interesting as a musician because the climax of their calls, the level of excitement, was at its highest when I was playing the musical high point of the phrase.”

Now the Australian musician, who has played with the prestigious Berlin Philharmonic and Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, among others, will this week perform the world premiere of a piece of music inspired by the experience as part of Canberra Symphony Orchestra’s Sleeping Stories concert.

Music in motion preview at the NFSA. Sally Walker. Picture: Peter Hislop

Walker’s earliest memory is at age three visiting a marine park with her mother and grandmother. When she was swimming a dolphin approached her of its own volition. I just remember this beautiful big animal coming up, just curious and friendly,”says the 51-year-old.

“(Since then) I’ve had a lifelong fascination with dolphins.”

She feels a synergy in the fact that she, like the dolphin, has built a life in which she operates “in a world of sound”.

“Dolphins operate in a world of sound, through echolocation,” she says. “Sound is the most important of all the senses for them. I think transporting some of their sounds into a musical work is really ­significant.”

The new work is by composer Christopher Sainsbury, who lectures in music at Australian National University, where Walker also teaches flute.

“It’s got a synergy with me,” Sainsbury says. “Because I’m originally from the coast, I grew up a coastie … (Sally and I) were talking about collaborating at some point in the future.”

Sainsbury, who has Dharug (inland Sydney area) ancestry, had already told Walker of his experience of being at a community gathering in Sydney and overhearing someone reciting the words of a dolphin song. They feared the melody had been lost forever.

“That always stuck with me,” he says. “So this was an opportunity to acknowledge the lost tradition and give life to a new dolphin song.”

Sally Walker serenades dolphins at Port Stephens in 2024. Picture: Gergo Rugli

After Walker negotiated a commission with the CSO, where she is artist in focus for the 2025 season, Sainsbury began writing what became his Concertino for Flute.

“I sat down with pencil and manuscript paper and trawled through recordings of dolphin sounds and song and notated them as best I could,” he says.

“So, there’s three or four dolphin excerpts embedded … some of them might be more clicks, but they have pitch so you can notate them and some of (the dolphin sounds) are more lyrical, with lots of reverb.

“Kind of like a violin – but underwater.”

Sainsbury says he never expected to get the sounds of a dolphin entirely accurate, but the melodic material of the dolphin ­recordings offered a unique inspiration.

He worked the Dharug word for dolphin, barru-waluri, into the piece as a reclamation of what had been lost through colonisation.

“How do you engage with a broken tradition? With a song that’s lost? It’s impossible.

“But, the word for dolphin is still there, barru-waluri. I noticed the word had a certain rhythm about it and a certain lyricism so I thought I’d invent a melody with it, the sound of the word.”

Sainsbury believes the CSO, as a “champion (of) Australian composers” is the perfect ensemble to debut the piece.

Sally’s first dolphin encounter was aged three with her grandmother. Photographed by her mother

“They’re smaller, more adaptable than the other capital city orchestras. There’s a great audience attendance here and support of both the classics and new music.”

When asked why he didn’t name the piece “barru-waluri”, he said: “I called it Concertino for Flute because the word is already embedded into the piece.

“I didn’t want to overstate it, we shouldn’t be rushing out to call everything an Aboriginal name as if that further authenticates something – it doesn’t.

“I’m happy for it to just be what it is … but with that deeper meaning.”

Even though Walker has played with the Berlin Philharmonic, one of the world’s top ­orchestras, she finds it “really special to premiere this piece in my hometown”.

“I think the world of composition in Australia is so open-minded. We’re so multinational, there are so many moving parts of the Australian personality.

“The breadth of the music is so stimulating.”

Why does she find it so stimulating? “Because the composers I work with are alive,” she says. “I would have loved to have had dinner with Johannes Sebastian Bach, who is my favourite composer, and ask him about all the meanings behind his flute sonatas … but, of course I will never know the answer to that question.

“The composers I work with – I can ask them all sort of questions.”

Sally Walker will play Concertino for Flute, with accompaniment, on March 20 at the National Museum of Australia as part of the Sleeping Stories concert.